Last week in Rome the 5th Coffee Break Conference took place. During his introductory speech Andrew Ollett asked why was such a project, ...

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Prof. Kunio Harikai on bhāvanā

Hisataka Ishida, a young and learned scholar of Pramāṇavāda and Mīmāṃsā, kindly accepted to translate for me some pages of Harikai's translation of Kumārila's Tantravārttika, mantrādhikaraṇa. This is what I understood:

–Harikai translated bhāvanā with sokushinryoku, something like “motivating energy”. If I am not wrong, this means that Harikai understands (just like Kṛṣṇa Yajvan, see a previous post) prayojakavyāpāra to refer to “bhāvanā” alone (and not to arthabhāvanā or śabdabhāvanā, with artha and śabda featuring as the prayojakas).

–Harikai translates śabdātmika and arthātmika (adj. of bhāvanā) as “having language as its essence (honshō)” and “having a purpose (mokuteki) as its essence (honshō)”, respectively. In a footnote (fn. 99, p.208), he explains that those translations have been inspired by the bhavārthādhikaraṇa.

Which brings me again to the problem of the exact understanding of the reference of prayojakavyāpāra (śabda-bhāvanā or just bhāvanā?). Moreover, how to understand śabdadharma? If the śabdabhāvanā “is a characteristic of language”, does this modify our understanding of the compound śabdabhāvanā? I guess that śabdadharma suits good a karmadhāraya interpretation, but does not crash against a tritiyātatpuruṣa (śabdena bhāvanā), too. I will come back to this topic.